The following facts are useful in increasing our understanding of dreams:

Fact 1 - Only you can interpret your dream.

Fact 2 - A Dream tends to have two different types of meanings: a general meaning where the dream is told as a symbolic story and an individual meaning, which is specific to the dreamer.

Fact 3 - Most dreams reflect subjects which are on your mind.

Fact 4 - Your dream may simply reflect events of your day providing an outlet and safe way of expressing pent up emotions.

Fact 5 - A Dream often mirrors real life experiences.

Fact 6 - Dream subjects include fantasies and frightening elements from the imagination or stimulated by watching movies or television, reading books or even playing computer games.

Fact 7 - The most common emotion experienced in a dream is anxiety and fear.

Dream

Fact 8 - The average person spends a total of about six years dreaming - 2 hours each night - although one third of our lives is spent sleeping.

Fact 9 - Dreams are strongly associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep during which brain activity is like wakefulness.

Fact 10 - REM sleep in adults averages 20-25% of total sleep which lasts about 90-120 minutes. REM sleep may help developing brains to mature. Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep.

Fact 11 - Sleep might be disturbed during the night but the mind interprets the disturbance and makes it a part of a dream in order to ensure continued sleep but the dreamer will awaken when danger threatens or the dream causes shock.

Fact 12 - Sexual dream occur less than 10 percent of the time usually in young adults.

Fact 13 - Up to 70% of females and 65% of males experience recurrent dreams.

Fact 14 - 12% of people only dream in black and white.

Fact 15 - Dreams can link to actual experiences and sensations i.e. when a phone is ringing in reality the dreamer might hear this in their dream.

Fact 16 - Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. The term comes from the Greek oneiros which means dream
Fact 17 - A person who studies oneirology is called an oneirologist.

Fact 18 - A daydream is a visionary fantasy experienced whilst awake, the result of the brain mulling over important, but not immediately relevant, issues when their circumstances do not pose interesting and engaging problems.